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  • Robert Jenrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Robert Jenrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Robert Jenrick on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what weight she has given to the list of people allegedly implicated in the murder of Mr Alexander Litvinenko provided to her by Mrs Marina Litvenenko; and whether her Department has taken any action against those people.

    Mr John Hayes

    The Home Secretary has responded in writing to Mrs Litvinenko on 8 March 2016. Whilst this was private correspondence, it reflected the Home Secretary’s oral statement to Parliament on 21 January 2016 setting out the Government’s response to Mr Litvinenko’s death.

    For security reasons the Government does not routinely comment on action taken in relation to specific individuals. A number of those listed are subject to some form of overt action, for example, the EU sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, on which the UK has led the way.

  • Robert Jenrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Robert Jenrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Robert Jenrick on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of racially motivated attacks in England and Wales targeted Jews in each of the last five years.

    Karen Bradley

    The Home Office does not hold the requested information. The Home Office receive data on hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales for the five centrally monitored strands (race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity) but these data cannot be broken down by race or religion of the victim and cover all offences, not just “attacks”. The most recently available data relate to the financial year 2014/15 and can be found at:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2014-to-2015

    The Association of Chief Police Officers also publishes data on hate crimes for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. These figures separate out the number of crimes that were anti-Semitic. Data for 2014/15 can be found at:

    http://www.report-it.org.uk/files/hate_crime_data_npcc_2014-15.pdf

    From April 2016, the Home Office will collect a breakdown of religion-based hate crime data from the police to help forces build community trust, target their resources and enable the public to better hold them to account. This information will be provided voluntarily in 2016/17, but we intend to make it mandatory from the following year.

  • Robert Jenrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    Robert Jenrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Robert Jenrick on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Attorney General, how many people were prosecuted for offences relating to anti-semitism in the UK in each of the last five years.

    Robert Buckland

    The Whilst the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does flag cases on its case management system that are identified as racial or religious hate crimes, it does not maintain a central record of prosecutions for offences specifically relating to anti-semitism. Such information could only be obtained through a manual search of records which would incur disproportionate cost.

  • Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Austin on 2016-04-28.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what information his Department holds on how many of the 35 individuals named under the US Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 currently hold assets in the UK.

    Harriett Baldwin

    The information requested is not held by HM Treasury.

    The Treasury does not routinely hold information regarding ownership of UK assets.

  • Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Austin on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will bring forward legislative proposals to prohibit individuals involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky from entering the UK and using its financial system; and if she will make a statement.

    James Brokenshire

    The Government already has the power to deny entry to individuals from the UK where their presence is not considered conducive to the public good, and separately, to freeze individuals’ UK assets provided that certain conditions are met.

  • Chi Onwurah – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the House of Commons Commission

    Chi Onwurah – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the House of Commons Commission

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Rt. hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington representing the House of Commons Commission, pursuant to the answer of 21 April 2016 to Question 34469, where the four portraits referred to in that Answer are located; and what proportion of all paintings and portraits in the Palace of Westminster those portraits represent.

    Tom Brake

    The four portraits are located in the following locations:

    • The portraits of Diane Abbott and Paul Boateng hang in Portcullis House.
    • The portrait of Dr Dadabhoy Naoroji is displayed in the corridor leading to the House of Commons Strangers Gallery.
    • The portrait of Baroness Amos hangs in the corridor off Princes Chamber in the House of Lords.

    There are approximately 310 painted portraits in the Parliamentary Art Collection.

    The majority of the painted portraits in the Parliamentary Art Collection are historical ones depicting members of the Royal Family and Parliamentarians pre-1900, of whom few were of black, Asian, or minority ethnic (BAME) origin.

    The Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art is committed to reflecting the diversity of the House today, and to recognising those who have influenced Parliament and contributed to its development in a notable way through the Parliamentary Art Collection. The Committee has agreed to give further consideration to the matter in the current Parliament.

  • Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that comprehensive data is collected on the situation and needs of older people in developing countries.

    Mr Nick Hurd

    DFID recognises the importance to collect disaggregated data that describes the distinct experiences of people across different stages in their lifecycle. We welcome the agreement of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) on a global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals, which includes clear levels of disaggregation by age for relevant indicators, ensuring that countries are able to plan and monitor the impact for elderly people in order to leave no one behind.

    We are supporting various programmes to strengthen the capacity of national statistical systems to produce the data that is needed. DFID also recently hosted a multi-stakeholder seminar to raise awareness for the importance of age data disaggregation and to address the technical challenges with age data disaggregation across the lifecycle, and the next steps include developing a DFID data disaggregation action plan.

  • Patrick Grady – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Patrick Grady – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Patrick Grady on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to encourage micro-enterprise companies with 10 or fewer employees or turnovers of less than two million euros to bid within its procurement system for consultancy contracts.

    Mr Nick Hurd

    DFID does not classify suppliers at the micro-enterprise level. These companies are included within the SME (small and medium-sized enterprise ) category as defined by the European Commission. In 2015/16 direct spend with SME’s was 32%, and DFID is on track to achieve the Cabinet Office target of 33% SME spend by 2020.

  • Steven Paterson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Steven Paterson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steven Paterson on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent discussions she has had with the Cabinet Office on a cross-governmental approach to implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

    Mr Nick Hurd

    The Secretary of State for International Development leads on this government’s approach to implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, with support from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster where appropriate. This will be a cross-government effort with individual Secretaries of State accountable through their single departmental plans. There will be continuous bilateral discussions with individual departments across Government. The Government also intends to produce a report in due course setting out how the UK is contributing to the Global Goals.

  • Gareth Thomas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Gareth Thomas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gareth Thomas on 2016-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the finding of the Syria Relief Network’s survey of refugees that only a third of Syrian child refugees currently attend school; what assistance her Department is providing to ensure that more Syrian child refugees receive an education; and if she will make a statement.

    Mr Desmond Swayne

    The UK, alongside UNICEF, has led the No Lost Generation Initiative (NLGI), which supports education for children in Syria and the region. We have allocated £122 million to NLGI since the start of the crisis, providing formal and non-formal education for hundreds of thousands of children in the region. We have improved early grade education, provided non-formal education and counselling in Jordan, and boosted formal, non-formal and catch-up education for underserved children in Lebanon. Our programmes provided catch-up classes in essential subjects for more than 160,000 inside Syria, and textbooks for more than 350,000 in Lebanon.

    In February we hosted the Supporting Syria and the Region conference in London, where participants agreed that all 1.7 million refugee and vulnerable children in countries neighbouring Syria will be in quality education by the end of 2016/2017 school year. DFID committed to increase funding on education in Jordan and Lebanon to £240 million up to 2020/2021 and is currently designing new programmes, aligned behind national education plans, to help deliver these ambitious goals.